


ruining a friendship

by thinksfaster



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Gen, I just wanted to write, Kinda, M/M, Not Beta Read, One Shot, Poetic, Polyamorous Losers Club (IT), Pre-Slash, Teenage Losers Club (IT), The Losers Club (IT) Love Each Other, and bill and stan happened, but the emphasis is on stenbrough, i guess?, it's very short, like in general
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-23 02:45:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21312883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinksfaster/pseuds/thinksfaster
Summary: He would like to be childish, too, he thinks, but that notion was dragged down a drain a lifetime ago, and the last months of the graces of childhood were spent destroying it, so Bill sits stoically while the others pretend, setting the Barrens alight with faux joy that’s comforting all the same.Stan doesn’t pretend, and Bill likes that about him.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough & The Losers Club, Bill Denbrough/Stanley Uris
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	ruining a friendship

**Author's Note:**

> hey enjoy this it took me half an hour!! im a bad writer and characterisations + dynamics are v difficult :'| anyways i hope you enjoy :>

Sitting together like this - in the Barrens, the quarry, anywhere where they can be alone together - has become consolingly normal for the Losers Club. Normal is still a concept they are re-learning, so to speak. (It's funny how up in the air one's life can feel after battling a carnivorous killer clown.)

Before (this doesn't have to be explained among them - few other things could divide Before and After in their lives), normal had been torturous in concept: something to run from. As soon as they had found something even more worth running from, however, running together seemed a natural progression. _People are all we've got, really_, Bill had said.

Now, pressed against each other, sticky skin against skin in the scorching heat, normal is a physical presence, and it holds them together. It's good.

"Do you think we'll still be friends when we're older?" Stan asks.

Bill knows (gift of self-doubt) that he probably, definitely, mean the Losers as a whole, a team, a single unit welded together in the heat, but something about the way he delivers it, eyes trained on Bill, makes him briefly entertain the thought of a very different question. 

Maybe he doesn't even mean friends at all. 

_ Friends _ seemed an almost trivial concept then, paled in comparison to the bond that had, uninvited, solidified between them in those weeks. The seven of them had thrown themselves into the summer, into the warmth, excitement fizzing at the tips of their fingers, and barrelled into a maze of fire. The buildings lining the streets of Derry flickering with their illusion, flames licking up from the sewage, performing a manic, clown-like dance in the jovial hellfire of a small town, fiery limbs flailing. Derry curled in on itself in the oppressive heat, and no-one fought back. Adults went driving at night and let the roar of the flames drown out the screams, the pleading. They walked past the posters, with their shriveling tape and blackened, curling paper, and shut their eyes so tight it hurt.

Bill had wanted to close his eyes. He can't, even now, and instead wastes his time forging some sense of happiness and contentment in the light (they're all sickeningly good at it), but careless to fake it in the dark. He doesn't need to, the thick blanket of the night solidifying his loneliness. He can't help hearing the screams, and sleep is only surrender to worse horrors.

They're child martyrs, smiling through the torture of pretending things don't hurt (or not having to, adult gazes happily deterred), having passed through the tunnel of aching hot light to a place only they know. A place where pretending doesn't feel less than normal, midnight scares a familiar rule - an oath, even. Written in ashy chalk, imprinted on scalded brains, carved into the tender lines of their palms.

And now expectations, the absurd belief that they _should have moved on by now_, and _should be getting better_, formulate Bill's biggest fear. They begin to lie to each other.

He would like to be childish, too, he thinks, but that notion was dragged down a drain a lifetime ago, and the last months of the graces of childhood were spent destroying it, so Bill sits stoically while the others pretend, setting the Barrens alight with a faux joy that's comforting all the same.

Stan doesn't pretend, and Bill likes that about him.

Everything about Stan was so real. The others saw Bill through rose-tinted glass, sometimes if not constantly, but Stan was razor-sharp and clear in his words. He grounded Bill in his most frenzied moments, when he felt a million miles apart from the rest of them, even pressed between Bev and Eddie in the Barrens, or jovially tumbling around with Richie, or curled up with Mike in the farmhouse, or poring over books with Ben, back-to-back in the town library. Suspended and isolated. And he wasn't sure what, exactly, but he hoped he did something for Stan too. He hoped Stan saw Bill the way he saw him, standing out starkly from the rest of them.

Now, late August, a year After, the haze of the summer is fading, but still present enough to drape a shimmering film of pitiful anticipation across Bill's vision when he makes (shaky) eye contact. He's always anticipating with Stan, never knows what for. (It would help if he knew what he wanted.)

He feels like he's spent the last few months trembling, always moments away from landing and finally finding purchase, but forever slightly out of reach. Everything Bill does is shaky: speaking, moving, touching Stan. Touching Stan is like an oath in itself, sticky blood between somehow soft fingertips, a hand on his shoulder too tentative to flatten.

The way they end up is like this, the tips of Bills' fingers and the heels of his palms grazing Stan's bared back, leaving invisible angry red marks there. Stan will then spend the rest of their time in the fading light feeling like blood is beading and breaking, to fall in tacky, hot rivulets down his back, and Bill like he's stained his hands scarlet just as he's about to hold them up to an audience of millions.

Bill's fear pushes him closer to Stan and then further away from, an eternal (everything feels so in the heat) dance orchestrated by iron strings that choke the blood flow in their limp limbs. Limbs that feel too long suddenly, so awkward in everything they do. A too-small, new-born calf trembling through its first moment in a too-large world. This is all so new, and it terrifies Stan, without the comfort or security of time-honed methods to fall back on in disaster, he feels suspended. _Bank and shoal of time_.

The sun moves to a new station in the sky, suddenly obscuring Stan from Bill's view.

He stands and moves to sit by him.

**Author's Note:**

> im on twitter @KKRAKOA come and like my dumbass tweets! comments + kudos very much appreciated C:


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